Blog 

This is a bit of a saga, but I discovered that I was no longer receiving push notifications for text messages on my phone,

I made a post on social media, asking for help.

It's a Samsung galaxy SII running stock android 4.1.2, I have done the usual, tried resetting/restarting the phone, resetting/restarting the message app etc. but nothing seems to be working.

Part of me wants to blame the Google+ app for this, but I need evidence first.

After making the post, I reset my phone again and now everything seems to be working fine? - weird. - I thanked everyone for commenting on my post which created text messages for me to test with.

But after that, my phone started to not receive notifications for text messages again, and I still couldn't figure out why? - like I'll open the message app up and there will be about 6 unread text messages, but I have received no alert for any of them via push notification.

At this stage I might have to send the thing back to Samsung and get them to reinstall android. - or do a factory reset, something I'm not looking forward to,

It was suggested to flash the unit and install a custom vanilla android OS, but I'm hesitant since custom ROMS don't have as broad of a support model, and the community seems to be a bit too tech savvy for me to want to experience the suffering.

Someone made the remark of planned obsolescence, given my devices age, (only got this thing back in late 2011, less than 4 years) and I go by the philosophy, if they can't fix the issue on this model, what incentive do I have to upgrade?

There is no reason why my S2 shouldn't be receiving push notifications, so until I figure out what the causing the issue, I don't think I'll be buying another Samsung phone anytime soon or again for that matter.

Fast forward about a few weeks later, I'm still living with the issue, lucky enough no-one ever messages me via text anyway, but I discovered that the Samsung Push Service failed to update about 2 months ago (at or around the time this issue started occurring) because of all the bloatware Samsung and Google jammed on to my phone there was no space left, and all I had to do was uninstall enough crap so that I may complete the update, annoyingly almost immediately after the update has been completed the bloatware re-installs itself because is botnet.

Finally, I... I might have actually fixed the issue,

Nope.avi

Most of this happened around late last November in 2014, at the time my brother was working in telecommunications, so I was able to get my hands on the pricing for a new S5, but it still seemed such a waste to replace a phone because of one stupid problem, I did what I should have done at the start and took my phone to my colleagues (who work in tech support) at work.

Following their suggestions, I started to look for an alternative text messaging app, the evolveSMS app was recommended to me as something to test with, after all, what did I have to lose? - the default android message app doesn't work now anyway.

So, after further research on teh interwebz I came across this article: https://www.cultofandroid.com/45033/how-to-change-your-default-sms-app-in-android-4-4-kitkat-tip/

This said that the Hangouts app now has SMS integration, so I checked it out as an alternative to the default android message app, it turns out it had already been set as my default text message app, (by who?), but required a sign-in to one of my many Gmail accounts that were created during the YouTube comments section integration with Google Fuss (AKA Google f#$ks up the internet campaign of November 2013), after I completed all the sign-in bullshit I tried sending some more text messages to my phone, still didn't receive any notification, did some more research and discovered that, that app depends on Google+ Push Notification Service, rather than install that app I just simply turned off the SMS integration for Hangouts, after that the evolveSMS message app, started to work again, for the first time ever!

(For context, I was using the evolveSMS messaging app for a little bit between when I first thought I had fixed the issue up until now because it *sort of* worked...)

I must have spent at least a good hour with one of my peers trying to get that to work, and all I had to do was turn off the SMS integration bullshit for Hangouts.

So now I have some kind of notification service, at this point I no longer care, but I figured I'd disable the evolveSMS app, do a reset to see what happens, now the default android text message app seems to be working perfectly, I've even tested it over an hour later with no issue.

TL;DR

- Phone should now be fixed, I feel bad for blaming Samsung when it was Google Hangouts causing the problem it was Google the entire time!

- Larry Page can go fuck himself piece of shit installing Google botnet on everyone's phone.

- It was Google Hangouts preventing the default text message app for my android phone from sending Push Notifications this entire time.

- Hangouts is a piece of shit.

Update:I uninstalled Google+ off my phone yesterday because my phone told me it didn't have enough space to install more important apps, now today after I turned on my Wi-Fi it automatically re-installs itself.

2/10

Google+ app is botnet.